


the current carries on

by Gerbilfriend



Series: Attempts at Navigation [3]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen, If ace did not go to grey terminal, part of an si oc au but can mostly be read alone, si oc only shows up in last section
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25416148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gerbilfriend/pseuds/Gerbilfriend
Summary: In one world Sabo does not meet Ace in Grey Terminal, he survives anyways.
Series: Attempts at Navigation [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1340098
Comments: 6
Kudos: 34





	the current carries on

**Author's Note:**

> I promised y'all this a bit ago but I was finally able to write it now. Decided to post it all in one go cause I've made you guys wait long enough

The outside is nothing like Sabo imagined it to be. The trash heap sticks, garbage mixing with the scent of blood.

He wished he didn’t know what blood smelled like.

His stomach twisted, nearly bringing tears to his eyes. He needed food.

He could go back. Could try and go back and slip back into the castle where there was food.

But everything was cold there. He had to sit when he was told and stand when he was told and read when he was told, but only what he was told to read.

_ I won’t go back, I won’t go back. _

Sabo is cold and alone and scared, but at least people see him for what he is now. His hunger is real, his fear is real.

He is real. 

He won’t go back.

XXX

There is blood pooling around the body. Sabo knows what blood looks like, at least he has known in theory for a while.

Seeing it pooling around a person- a corpse, still warm was different. He had been hidden in a crat, trying to conserve earth as best he could when he had heard the shouting.

Sabo knew he shouldn’t look, but he had always been too curious for his own good so his head had looked through the gaps.

It had happened fast.

So fast.

In the books it had always been described in slow motion. It had always been described as a slow arc as the blade was stabbed in the books he was not supposed to read.

It hadn’t happened like that.

He hadn’t even realized what happened until one of the two had slumped down and the other had run.

Then there had been a wheeze. A wheeze that was still echoing in Sabo’s head.

All too easily that could be him.

Sabo does not want to die.

XXX

When Sabo imaged outside of High Town he had imagined something happy, something free. Something better than what he had been trapped in. He already knows how stupid his ideas were.

Every day he finds a new illusion to break.

He can’t go back. He can’t.

XXX

He learns to steal. He learns to watch patterns and it is still cold and dark and he is still hungry but he learns to steal.

Learning does not come easy.

It comes with bruises and cuts and runs until he can’t breath. It comes with aches and the knowledge that no matter how much he steals he is not going to steal enough.

He learns by watching and by breaking. One time he burns so hot that he can’t move, that all he could do was lie in his crate and hope that nobody found him.

No one came to help him either.

He does not understand Grey Terminal. He understood enough of High Town to know it was wrong and he needed to get out but he needs to get out of here as well.

Nowhere is right.

This is just the reverse of what was wrong earlier.

It is wrong as well.

But. 

But.

He won’t go back so he has to keep going.

There is something burning in his chest and Sabo uses that to push himself along.

XXX

Somewhere in the first few months he comes up with a plan. Or maybe a hope, one of the two.

Maybe it's just this island that is like that. Maybe they, Hightown, have broken everything here.

Maybe.

But that means that things might be better elsewhere.

Maybe.

It was something to keep going for at least. Something to run too instead of just away from.

XXX

Sabo’s stomach aches all the time. He still thinks about the tables laden with food, almost groaning under the weight of everything.

He had had that once. 

If he went back then he might still be able to have that.

But.

It would still be a cage. It would still be wrong.

At least he was real here.

He keeps going.

XXX

Sabo listened to the people discussing Mount Cubulo. It was an option. He could go there, try to survive off of plants and the land.

He could try that.

Except he can’t.

Sabo understands people better than he understands the woods. It was better to keep trying to steal. Besides, things were looking up there, at least a little.

All he had to do was keep going.

XXX

_ NO! _

Everything was gone. Sabo knew that he should have been more careful, should have hid the things he stole better, should have been more careful.

He had been so tired of running. When the group of slightly older kids had asked him for help running a scam he had said yes.

He had said yes to the next one as well.

For a moment he even thought that he had found people. Found people that he could rely on. That maybe Grey Terminal was broken but he didn’t have to be.

For a moment he had still been hungry and dirty and tired but he had had hope.

That hope made him reckless. Made him a bit less cautious about hiding where he stored his portion of the loot.

That had been what cost him everything. His crate hidey hole, everything that he had been storing to try and get off the island was gone.

XXX

He tries to steal it back. He does. But he is smaller than all the other kids and they are much stronger than him.

He barely manages to escape.

Everything hurt and he was back at square one.

_ Not again.  _ Sabo promised himself,  _ not again.  _ High Town is rotted but so was Grey Terminal.

Maybe it was just the world that was rotted, not a particular place.

Sabo didn’t know.

XXX

Sabo stared down at the pool of water, it was grimy and he could see the chunks floating in it.

It still was the best view of himself that he had gotten in who knew how long.

It almost felt like he was looking at a completely different person. A gapped tooth person with too thin cheeks wearing rags.

He looks like he belongs.

Almost.

His eyes are still his. Blue and steady and his hair is still blond under all the grim he tries not to feel about.

They still mark him as different. As noble.

Sabo isn’t sure how he feels about that.

Well, he does. Under everything, under the dirt and the hungry and the emptiness something still burns, because maybe if they, if the nobles didn’t take everything then there would be something left for the Terminal.

XXX

One advantage of being a little older is that people take him more seriously. Sabo does not try to work with another group, he knows better than that now, he knows so much better than that now, but he can get work.

Sort of.

Bar tolerated him around because he is quick and clever and can point out when they are going to get pickpocketed.

It doesn’t make him popular with the other people of course, but he pick pockets in a different section of the Terminal and does his best to stay mostly under the radar. 

He can also listen to the stories of the sea. The old sailors there don’t mind if he wipes things down nearby them

Sometimes, they even let him ask questions.

Slowly he begins to hope. To wonder if he could maybe be a cabin boy, be a pirate and leave everything behind.

The sea always looks so clean from the shore.

XXX

Then he gets a chance, or something like that.

He’s cleaning the bar, back aching from the blows he had only partly been able to dodge when a shadow falls across him. He dismisses it at first, places like this it was better to keep his head down.

_ Bluejam. _

Sabo knows the stories.

Sabo knows that Bluejam was a pirate who was slowly using more and more of Grey Terminal of his base, selling and storing his treasure.

He also knew that at least two of the blood stains that he had to clean up were made by Bluejam.

But. 

But.

Sabo knows that people have waited outside the bar twice to jump him, and he had only barely been able to get away the second time.

Sabo knows that Bluejam is a strong pirate and being part of a crew is probably better than being part of a gang.

Maybe.

Either way Sabo needed to get off land. He needed a new base too because more and more of the people he had pissed off were looking for him and Sabo knew it would not end well for him if he was caught.

It was worth a shot.

Sabo walked up. “Can I be your cabin boy?”.

Bluejam glared down, and Sabo could feel his piercing gaze as he stood, trying to look like someone that would be helpful on a ship. “Sure, I guess we need a new one”.

_ What happened to the last cabin boy?  _ Sabo knows better than to ask.

XXX

The gunshot goes off and Sabo feels like he is five years old and new to the terminal as he watches yet another corpse fall to the group.

Yet another moment of death.

“I know you all can do better of course”, Bluejam said silkily as he turned to Sabo and the rest of the crew, “there has to be someone on board that is not a disappointment”.

Sabo is the one who has to pull the corpse overboard. His muscles burn and his hands are sticky as he tries to lift the body up and over.

He tries not to think about the type of fluids on his hands, just slides them through the railing in an attempt to wash them off.

_ I could run. _

He doesn’t.

XXX

“Still here I see”, Bluejam says the next morning, “it's good to see that you aren’t as squamish as the last one. Would have been a pain to find a new boy”.

Sabo isn’t stupid. He can hear the implicit threat. Can remember the sound of the gun as it went off, the only warning before the sailor had collapsed.

He doesn’t risk speaking. Instead he just ducks his head.

That sets a pattern for the next year.

XXX

He turns ten. He turns ten and it does not matter, not really.

He turns ten and in High Town Sabo is pretty sure that that would have meant a big party, would have meant food and celebration and-

Fake smiles.

Sabo still remembers how fake everything was there. At least here Sabo can see the knives as they come for him.

That has to mean something.

XXX

Sabo learns to make himself valuable. He does not let on that he can read, exactly, but it's not hard to use it to his advantage. To keep track of what Bluejam wants, what he needs.

The happier Bluejam is with him the safer he is.

Sabo still does not want to die. Not quick, not to a knife in the back or a bullet, shot in the moment of temper.

Sabo does not want to die.

XXX

It's the raids that make Sabo’s blood start to boil, the sailors at the docks never talked about the screaming or the smell of smoke.

They never talked about the people brought on board.

If Sabo were brave, if Sabo were brave then he would help them.

But nobody really helped Sabo either so he thinks it works out in the end.

Maybe that's the truth, that everything is rotten and the only person that will look out for you is you.

XXX

Bluejam is bored. Sabo can tell.

It's never a good thing when Bluejam is bored. 

Sabo sees the maps on his desk. Remembers the forest he was never quite brave enough to venture into.

An idea starts to form in his head.

XXX

“Why don’t you use him as a subordinate?”, Sabo suggested as Bluejam turned his cruel eyes on him. 

“Oh?”.

“You want to expand right, you rule Grey Terminal, why not Mt. Cubulo as well”.

“And you think that Higuma could help me with that?”. There was danger in Bluejam’s voice, talking to him was like dancing on the blade of a knife.

“I think he has contacts that could help you, I heard he was ousted by the Dadan group and likely has a bone to pick with them”.

A slow smile curves across Bluejam’s face and Sabo forces himself to stay upright.

It's working. 

Now all he has to do is see it through.

XXX

At first it goes well. At first Higuma’s knowledge of the terrain combined with the forces that Bluejam can bring to bear mean that they get off hits on the Dadan bandits.

It's satisfying, a part of Sabo admits. Satisfying to be strong. To be winning.

Besides, the Dadan bandits are bandits too, so it's not like he is really hurting anybody innocent.

Then an ambush is predicted. 

Then things start to go wrong.

The bandits know where they are. It doesn’t make sense! It's like they can turn invisible and spy or something and Sabo doesn’t know how!

Bluejam was getting angrier. His hand had started to go for his gun.

XXX

He needed to hide. Sabo knew that Bluejam was enraged after the last failure, and could feel the tension.

He needed to stay out of Bluejam’s way.

Sabo shoved aside the crates, surprised for a moment at how easy they were to move before  his brain caught up.

There was a girl, about his age, clothes patched and worn and eyes wide. 

“Who are you!”, he demanded.

“I’m Ann. What’s your name?”. She offered, like she wasn’t just on a ship she had no business being on.

“None of your business”, he needed her spot. He needed her out. He needed to know, “why are you here?”.

“Accident?”. She sounded so confused as she said it.

“You’re lying”, he retorted. 

“No I’m not”.

“Yes you are!”.

“Why would I be lying?”.

“You’re a spy aren’t you! That's why you’re here”. It was the only thing that made sense.

“No I’m not!”.

She totally was.“Yes you are. I’m gonna tell the crew”.

“Please don't, I just wanted to go to sea, that's all, I promise. I’m not a spy or anything”, the girl tried to explain but no one with sense would have gotten on Bluejam’s ship.

There was only one reason, really.

“Liar!”, he says again before raising the alarms. The girl looked strong, there was something about her that he read as danger.

She didn’t fight through, not as one of the other crew members, Sabo never bothered to learn their names and he doubted they cared enough to learn his, dragged her away, to the cells below.

It was safe enough to come out now, Sabo thought, it was safe enough.

He wondered if she was like him, someone who ran away.

It didn’t matter through, Sabo could hear the start of fighting on deck and he had to get the powder.

Strange or not, she would be dead soon.

  
  



End file.
